Volvo 480 Club Europe

I join this nice forum about the 480 with my last purchase, a 480 turbo bought in Madrid and it's going to substitute my SAAB C900 as daily family car.
First of all, sorry if I make mistakes with the language as english is not my mothertongue.

In any case I'll try to post more pictures than text to avoid hurt your eyes.

I'm very happy with the car, it has 160.000kms (100.000miles) on the broken odometer, but with documents on hand I think it broke one year ago, so, I spect it has 170.000 more or less.

I made 500kms in the first contact, after purchase and it runs softly, with a bass noise probably coming from the exhaust, squeaking noise from the top of the dashboard and leaking on the rear door. As I red, normal things for the 480.

But exception on that and a clutch that engage very high, the rest of the car is very solid and I think it is not going to give me too much trouble.

I feel it doesn't accelerate very hard but it is very easy to coast at high speed without big effort, and very quite too, I notice there's not big difference in noise between 100 to 140 km/h. (60 to 90 mille/h) The good aerodinamics probably helps on this.

I find it very good on cornering but I also need more time to get used to it.

It has also comfort seats, but it takes a while to fit the right position for a long drive.

The bad side of the car will be the size of the boot, as I'm going to use it as family car, something tells me I'm going to need extra storage on the roof.

I'll post pictures later when I have posted more messages as it seems I'm too new for uploading the pictures from tinypic.

you need 10 posts before you can put up pictures or links


que necesita 10 mensajes antes de poder poner fotos o enlaces

Bienvenido al foro de 480 .

Ok, I see. No prob. I'll continue posting.

Next move is to look for roof racks. It seems that the original solution is to make holes on the roof, put a rail with screws and then use this rail to mount different roof racks.
I don't see a great idea to make holes on the roof.
On this post someone found racks that fit with the section of the car.

http://www.volvo-480-europe.org/forum/v ... =8&t=16939

Removing the rear plastic cover backwards, permit to add the roof rack on the back. Nice solution.

The car is equiped with ABS, Aircon, pretension belt, rear third stop light, fog lights and partial leather seats.

A must for this type of car is the variable power steering and the auxiliar water pump for the turbo. This is probably a good thing to increase the lifetime of the turbo.

Ok. 10. Now the Interesting thing

Looks very clean and tidy , more than can be said about most in the UK!

ours had been in Germany for about four years which reduced the amount of salt and grit being blasted at the body-work

PS
I do like the way you 'circumvented' the need for ten posts before phots allowed

ie ten short one liners!!!

not sure about if a roof rack will keep the noise level down it will knock your mpg down (or your litres / 100km UP)

Yes, I'm very happy with it, let's see if it doesn't give me too much troubles. There're things to fix, of course. Step by step

The car comes from Madrid, and was firstly bought in Caceres, a dry place; in Spain, normally, there are no salt on the roads, a good thing for the body, you only can see rusted cars close to the coast because the influence of the sea but the damage is much lower than the salt.

I need the roof rack twice a year, it's reasonable even if the fuel consumption or noise increases. Now it' around 9 liters/100kms. (31mpg) Not bad.

Finally I can take the car after two months.
A quick maintenance changing air filter, 10w40 oil, filter, oil 75w90 for the gear box and volvo spark plugs.

The spark plugs very old causing a bad idle and not starting when warm. The gap between electrodes where more than 1mm.

Trying to fix the leaking rear glass I rotate the rubber that is not in bad condition. The rear glass close badly and it's necessary to press a lot. Adjusting the lock didn't improve the situation as it is not possible to move it more outwards.
I clean also the top part.

I also adjust the clutch. It engages too up.

unscrewing the nut solves the problem.
I like a lot this simplicity compare to the hidraulic type where old rubber on the master or slave cylinder can create a non operative clutch.

Another fix. The squezing defroster. It was terrible the noise it made.

Probably is a temporary solution but I didn't remove the dashboard, so time saving.

Next is to flush the coolant.
I found the bottom screw for flushing but I only see one on top for purge. Is it more than one? (that on the center of the picture)